


There's Blood on Your Badge, Didn't You Notice?

by DustySoul



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 13:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4307427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DustySoul/pseuds/DustySoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Season 1, Brett reflects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There's Blood on Your Badge, Didn't You Notice?

**Author's Note:**

> For the kinkmeme: http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/725.html?thread=849621#cmt849621  
> ...  
> Sorry it's not happy.
> 
>  
> 
> ALSO: Please note that I'm white. SUPER white. I'm pulling a lot from what my (black) friends have told me about their personal journeys struggling with internalized and institutional racism. But my writing this is kind of inherently problematic. 
> 
> So just... be aware. If you think something is inaccurate or offensive please let me know! I'm way more invested in this being the best story it can be (even though it's a drabble I wrote and edited in less than a day) than I am about my fee fees.

Brett never had a reason for becoming an officer. It just… kind of happened. So there’s no heartfelt motivation and no idealism to be crushed by the events of the last couple of days. That doesn’t mean he’s not fucking _exhausted_. Everyone who wasn’t “purged” as they've come to call it, have been working twelve hour shifts seven days a week. (Not even thinking of the overtime pay can so much as put a dent his spirits.)

He keeps thinking back, this time staring his reflection the 5 th coffee of the day, of the boy he was at eighteen. He’d never had any good or inspirational interactions with the police. He’d never had any bad ones either. And he’d never, at the time, considered his luck in that. He shrugged it off, telling himself he's not the  type of boy to party, to be out past dark, or to get into mischief. He never drank or did drugs and very rarely smoked. He had to help his mother take care of his father. It didn’t leave him a lot of free time. And the time it did leave him? He preferred to spend sitting on the fire escape picking out cords on his perpetually out of tune guitar.

So graduation day found him a parent down, sick of school, with no idea what to do with his life. All he knew was that he wanted to stay close to home, to be with his mom. And Hell’s Kitchen’s everything is always understaffed.

Once in the precinct it was easy to decide what kind of cop he wanted to be. To _choose_ to be one of the good ones. To put effort into it, everyday. To be the kind of cop you’d never so much as _think_ about bribing. One that’s compassionate to everyone, who can never be riled up. One who never plants evidence and doesn't tolerate it when his partners do . One who tips off some budding new lawyers about a young woman who really needs the help...

And once in the precinct it was glaringly obvious that it didn’t matter what kind of cop he is. He’s one man lost in a sea of them. And he’d thought, walking through those halls,  _I can’t change anything, not like this, not from here_. He’d thought _it barely matters that I’m a good cop if I’m the only one._ And well...  _s_ ure, it matters to the people he helps. But in the grand scheme of things...

Ha! So thank god he didn’t sign on to enact justice or to protect the people or any of those grand, golden reasons. If he had, he’d have been gone a long time ago.

 

The ones who are left, when it’s all said and done, go for drinks at the nearest bar. It’s not the first time they’ve had off, but it’s the first time they want to do anything other than go home and collapse in their beds, already dreading the sound of the alarm. It’s also the first time Brett’s really aware of the gaping ache in his chest. Because _he hadn’t known how deep this injustice and corruption went._  And he doesn't know what he would have done if he'd known. After all, he knows what his co-workers get up to. He knows who likes to hassle the youth on the way home from school. He knows who's wielding a badge to be a bully... And he'd never done anything. Because there was nothing to do.

There are four of them, cramped around a table meant for two. They nurse the first round (all taking scotch) in silence. He knows them all by face and one, Alex, by name.

Alex drains his glass first and after waving at the waiter for a second one says, “So what sorry turn of events brought you boys to this hell hole?”

Brett doesn’t know if he means Hell’s Kitchen or the force in general or what. He takes a sip of hid drink and says, “Unlucky, I guess.” And it’s a hell of a time to get unlucky when it comes to black men and the police. Or maybe he really has been unlucky this entire time and just never new it.

The miserablist of the bunch, a white man in his 40s says, “Justice. Saving lives. Holding up the law. That kind of thing.”

And immediately there’s a sour taste in Brett's mouth that has nothing to do with the liquor. He wants to scream. He wants to shake this man and say _It’s only the past_ ** _week_** _that’s left you feeling_ ** _let down_** _? It’s only the past_ ** _week_** _you see in injustice in this job? How the hell long have you been here? How the hell long have you held that badge? Where the fuck have you been it’s only the past week that’s left you feeling betrayed?_

And of course he should have known. He's been too caught up in his own thoughts, his own reflection, his own bone deep exhaustion to think about how the other officers are taking this.

He excuses himself instead, forcefully reminded of the stark white place he works at and the stark white officers surrounding him in this bar. Tonight there’s not another black face in uniform. What few their are are probably working the night shift or scattered throughout bars in the rest of the city, closer to home - where ever that may be.

He doesn’t bother to find them. He’s a little afraid of what he might hear. So he goes home instead. And tosses and turns. And barely sleeps at all.

 

He’d quit. He would. The next week shows him what he should have already known and been prepared for: it isn’t just that nameless man who happened to be his drinking buddy. It feels like everyone, the ones who weren’t purged, feel this way. And he shouldn’t let it get to him, but it _does_. He didn’t join for justice or because he thought it was the right thing, but he did his damnedest to serve like he did. And everyone else is talking the talk but he hasn’t seen any of them actually _do_ anything. And sure, sure it’s different to find out all your friends are dirty. But it shouldn’t be a  _betrayal_. If he was your friend, your partner, fine, sure. But to feel betrayed that it was the force as a whole? What does it matter that it was more than one hundred? How many cops have to be dirty until it cuts the clean ones deep? (And are they really clean? The signs have been there. Sure, well hidden. And there's always been abuse in the system... But who actually did anything?)

 Shocked but not surprised. And all that shit. _Shit_.

And he’d quit. Except their force is now so full of baby faced idealist fresh from the academy or fresh to Hell’s Kitchen that they’re barely functioning as is. He knows they can’t afford to lose him. (He’s even gotten a raise). Brett’s the rare cop that was born and raised here and knows every inch of the city. It’s not just his experience with a gun and a badge, but his experience in this war zone that makes him invaluable.

And besides… if he did leave a certain vigilante would have no one to send the mice running to.

Someone doesn’t trust the new recruits…

It makes him wonder if he shouldn’t either. It makes him wonder if he does. If he ever trusted any of them. If he ever could again.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to message or follow me on tumblr at dusty-soul.tumblr.com


End file.
